New Prestige for Old Theater : North Hollywood: The 1926 El Portal is declared a city historic-cultural monument, protecting it from demolition for at least one year.

The El Portal--the run-down dowager of San Fernando Valley theaters that has been the subject of numerous cultural controversies in recent years--can now claim a regal title. The North Hollywood theater was declared, by unanimous vote of the Los Angeles City Council on Tuesday, an official historic-cultural monument.

“Maybe the theater has seen better days,” said David Cameron, acting president of the Los Angeles Historic Theatre Foundation, “but we feel it is possibly the most architecturally significant suburban theater in the Valley.”

The theater foundation and a small group called Friends of the El Portal were the primary sponsors of historic-cultural status for the El Portal, which opened in 1926 as a Vaudeville and silent-movie house.

The designation means that the theater can be neither demolished nor significantly altered, architecturally, for at least one year. It becomes landmark No. 564 in the city program that began in 1962.

The landmark list includes not only the familiar--City Hall and the San Fernando Mission--but also the somewhat obscure--a 22-foot-high tower of wooden pallets in Van Nuys and a ranch in Canoga Park where the first eucalyptus tree in Southern California might have been planted, according to the city’s Cultural Heritage Commission, which administers the program.

The only other theater to be so designated in the Valley is the La Reina in Sherman Oaks, which in 1987 was gutted and reopened as a shopping plaza.

The El Portal was designed by noted architect L. A. Smith, who did several other local theaters, including the Rialto in South Pasadena. Cameron admits that architecturally, the El Portal is not nearly as lavish as the famed Art Deco movie palaces that were built around the same time in downtown Los Angeles and Hollywood.

But he said that the 1,200-seat El Portal nonetheless has significance. “The interior fixtures, such as in the auditorium ceiling and the lighting, are classic examples of the designs used in neighborhood theaters in the 1920s,” he said.

Cameron even likes the fact that in the 1940s the theater was remodeled, somewhat, with the result that some of Smith’s original ornamentation was covered with the curlicues and plant imagery popular at the time.

“That is part of theater design history, too,” he said.

But one man’s architectural curiosity is another’s headache. “I have a hard time understanding why they want to save some of that stuff that was added on, later,” said Robert Caine, managing director of the Actors Alley theater troupe, which hopes to soon move into the El Portal.

Pending final approval by the City Council, the troupe will receive a $250,000 loan and grant package from the Community Redevelopment Agency to renovate the theater, dividing it into 400- and 99-seat playing areas. The new status for the building means that Actors Alley will have to make sure their renovations do not alter, irreversibly, the ornamentation.

“We are working it out, now,” Caine said. “But it’s just another level of bureaucracy we have to go through.”

When the sound era arrived in movies, the El Portal thrived as a second-run theater. Later, it became a Spanish-language movie house. But in the last several years, the theater has been mostly dark and allowed to deteriorate. It was proposed that it be used for rock concerts, but that scheme failed when one of the first such concerts turned into a riot.

A would-be live theater impresario announced in 1991 that he would present big-time musicals and plays there featuring celebrity performers, but that effort ended with his conviction on charges of untrue and misleading advertising. And last year, the theater was back in the news when Ice-T played there during the time his “Cop Killer” song was a national issue.

The proposed use of the building by the Actors Alley troupe, which has been presenting plays at a small theater in North Hollywood for 21 years, is the latest to stir controversy. A neighborhood group has criticized the CRA funding, saying that there are more urgent uses for the money in the run-down area.

The CRA funding still has to be approved by the City Council before Actors Alley can move into the El Portal. If the troupe is successful in doing this, the El Portal will become the first live theater in the San Fernando Valley since 1966 large enough to have full theatrical union status.